This is another spring image from my visit to the Alnarp Park (the park is further described here Tree legs). My thinking is that the vertical and diagonal major trunk lines will help to counteract that the image could be busy. Also, I deliberately kept the saturation of the leaves low, for them to complement instead of dominating.
Specific Feedback Requested
Any comments are welcome!
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
1/200, f/13, ISO 800, 42 mm (84 mm eqjuiv.) Olympus camera OM-D EM-1X, Olympus lens 40-150, mft system, handheld (probably I had set the ISO for shooting at 300 mm equiv.!)
This has a stained glass window aspect to it and I think you’re right about the size and darkness of the branches organizing an otherwise busy scene. The delicacy of the new leaves is further emphasized by those big branches and I like the dichotomy. Have you played with raising the shadows in the branches a bit? Not sure how it would look, but some detail there might work nicely. The big V in the center keeps attention where it should be. So well seen. I love your eye for this kind of thing.
Definitely not an easy scene to compose. But I think it is quite enjoyable here. I find the black frame also works really well because of how the silhouette of the trunk connects to it. It looks almost like a mosaic of the sky scene in the BG. For that reason, I would recommend making the trunk on the left about 1/5 of the way from the top to be burned to become a silhouette as well.
This does have the look and feel of a stained glass window, as mentioned by @Kris_Smith. Ola I agree with your assessment that the strong diagonal lines help provide some structure to the viewer. They organize the busyness of the image enough that the view knows where to look. Silhouettes are very effective at grabbing a viewers attention, and combine that with strong diagonal silhouettes, and you are in business.
Regarding the low saturation, this is perhaps subjective, but I think that you could get away with more color saturation because the diagonals are strong enough to counter balance the “busyness”. I think more saturation would also enhance the “stained glass window effect”
Seeing the image as a stained glass or a mosaic, as pointed out by some of you, is a good way to understand what will improve the image. So, as recommneded I have now increased the saturation and darkened some branches in the ULC. A rework is posted at the top. I chosed to increase the general saturation (and not only the yellow/orange) to in addition to the leaves also increase the shift from white to blue sky when moving from the LLC to the URC.
At first you just saw this as a silhouette image, but the stained glass analogy helped you to see the potential and elevate this image to another level. Love the rework Ola, well done.
Monochrome, maybe? This is all about lines and shapes for me, and the color is a bit distracting. That black frame also does a great job in this case. I think the trunk/branches need to be black and the sky white and the leave a shade of gray. It all feels so much stronger this way, but, of course, just my opinion.
@Tony_Kuyper, this is somewhat to going back to my original thinking, but you have taken it all the way! I like it very much, and have posted a B&W image above. Thanks!
